


a very near understanding

by ballantine, FeoplePeel



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Astronomical Sex, Bodyswap After Effects, Character Study, Characters Writing Fanfiction, Developing Relationship, M/M, Quote: It was erotic probably., Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Weird Biology, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 09:22:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19438540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeoplePeel/pseuds/FeoplePeel
Summary: "There's simply been a reheating of the books, so to speak. A few halo points for me, a tiny speck of brimstone for you and it all works out in the end, you'll see."It's as sound a theory as Aziraphale's own. And they haven't heard from either office so –"Why worry about it," he says with a smile and leans back in his chair.Aziraphale and Crowley experience unforeseen side effects from their swap. Transformative panic and fiction ensue.





	1. a very near understanding

**Author's Note:**

> We worked on this for a pretty solid two weeks and we had a lot of fun doing it!
> 
> We want to thank [alamorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn), who gave us the line referenced as a quote in our tag, and the excerpt surrounding it (you'll know it when you see it).

_But he'd known him for thousands of years. They got along. They nearly understood one another._ _  
_ \- Aziraphale, Good Omens

Crowley would like to say he noticed something was off right from the start, but truthfully he was in such a state of delayed shock at the Ritz, he wouldn't have noticed if God herself appeared in front of their table and serenaded them with Candle in the Wind.

He’s still feeling out of sorts from his quick visit to Heaven. Humans say it can be stressful, seeing the old place: all those uncomfortable family dinners at the holidays. Crowley hadn't seen Gabriel's tetchy smile in thousands of years, and yet a few minutes had been enough to send him wishing for a hellfire hose. If he could fall again, he _would._

Anyway, Gabriel’s face; he assumes that was the problem.

So he doesn't think much about it when he orders a second helping of the hazelnut meringues – they’re miniature and come with a good dollop of coffee cream on the side. He’s a full-grown demon who's had quite the week; he's entitled to an extra helping of miniature meringues if he wants them.

It's that last detail that sticks out: he wants them. And even more disturbing, they are not the only things he wants.

His senses pull him hither and thither in the days that follow. Humanity carries on unperturbed by Adam Young's sundry flourishes to reality, but after the apocalypse that wasn't, Crowley’s life stubbornly refuses to fall back to routine.

He notices – stuff. Things _._ The delicate scent of spiced apple in the air from a nearby cider shop; a whiff of cocoa from an outdoor cafe table that makes him want to curl up with a good book. It's all very appalling.

It's not until he is strolling through Camden Market and a few stall owners actually _smile_ at him that he really gets spooked. The next minute he is hopping on the first bus to the bookshop. (It's a 29 bus destined for Wood Green but no matter – it'll drop him in Soho.)

* * *

Over the course of six thousand years, Aziraphale had not so much lacked an imagination, as much as he hadn’t the foggiest how to access it. This was largely thanks to years of looking pointedly in the opposite direction. Oh, he had tried it a few times, but he always did his best work when he followed what he considered the proper order of things, nudging humanity along in their most noble pursuits. Delightful beings, able to conceptualize and write their ideas out to be performed or consumed. To entertain or educate! And if he stood over their shoulder, every now and again, it was only his duty.

So Aziraphale knew he had an imagination somewhere. It only occurred to him to look for it over the past week, as he found himself absentmindedly writing… _additions_ in the margins of _Pilgrim’s Progress_ before miracling them away, appalled at himself for blemishing a first edition.

He doesn’t know what to make of it, and so doesn’t feel comfortable mentioning it to Crowley. So what he says over brunch is, "My dear, have you noticed anything unusual about the scones today?”

“Unusual how?”

“They taste...” Aziraphale doesn’t know how to describe his sudden aversion to the baked good. He settles on, “I find them displeasing.”

“They're fine.” Crowley leans forward to snatch up the last one, as if to drive the point home.

“That's just it isn't it? You don't like them. I do.” He stares at him and Crowley stares back, crumbs dusting his bottom lip. “So why have you eaten them all?”

To his surprise, Crowley lowers his glasses.

“I wasn't going to say anything,” he says and swallows the last of the scone. “But I made my usual coffee this morning, then had to upend the entire sugar canister into it. How I'll face the ficuses tonight, I just don’t know.”

“You don't think there was some minor transference. From the,” Aziraphale means to say ‘the swap’ but settles for motioning between them with an awkward wiggle of his fingers.

“What? No!” Crowley pulls away with rather too much fuss. “We were only – like _that_ for a few hours.”

“Still, it's not impossible.” Aziraphale sticks his tongue out. “See here, did you leave any taste buds behind?”

“Put that thing away. I've occupied the same vessel for six thousand years. I think I'd know if I'd mislaid my tongue.”

Aziraphale obeys with a fond smile. “Of course you would. I did read somewhere that human taste buds change every so often. Perhaps this is simply that.”

" _Or,"_ Crowley flags down a waiter and points to their empty plate. The man gives him a blindingly bright smile and rushes off to comply. "There's simply been a reheating of the books, so to speak. A few halo points for me, a tiny speck of brimstone for you and it all works out in the end, you'll see."

It's as sound a theory as his own. And they haven't heard from either office so –

"Why worry about it," he says with a smile and leans back in his chair.

* * *

So Aziraphale is definitely not worried when he finds a patch of scaly skin between his shoulders that night – though he thinks he might forgo trips to the park with Crowley in the near future. Blasted human constitutions, he thinks with a scoff. Able to withstand the bubonic plague, but a little sun damage and look at what becomes of them. 

Still, he hasn’t read through his new collection of books from Adam. Perhaps this is a sign he should stay indoors and widen his reading palate.

After he finishes, he looks around and realises he’s read everything else. On a normal Sunday, this wouldn't bother Aziraphale. Unbeknownst to him, this is not a normal Sunday. 

This Sunday, Aziraphale’s imagination is waking up.

* * *

Crowley doesn’t want to consider it – the idea of some divine fingerprint sitting somewhere on the shiny tinted surface of his insides, a little angelic spark guttering away in the howling darkness of the cavernous void where his own light once sprung forth. It won't match his current aesthetic at all. No, the thought is simply unacceptable.

But then it starts to get worse.

It's not just the shop minders in Camden or errant waitstaff – humans everywhere are reacting oddly.

Most of his time on Earth has been spent wrapped in a sort of casual but fashionable overcoat of _don't look,_ but on the occasion that this fails (about every other day) and he forgets to make an effort (every other Wednesday, or thereabouts), humans tend to find him unsettling. He is the magnetic but slightly-off man in the dark corner; the figure walking ten feet behind you on a sidewalk with only one working streetlight; the shifty chap in the off-license buying troubling quantities of poster tacks at two in the morning.

But now people smile at him on public transport. Girls and boys standing outside music venues give him lingering once-overs as he walks by. One older lady tries to make small talk about the weather while he is waiting for Aziraphale in the park, and that is really the final straw.

“I'm not sure I understand your concern,” Aziraphale says after Crowley has finished enumerating these recent infractions.

“Imagine if you were in your bookshop, and customers suddenly started asking you questions. And worse – expecting _answers.”_

Understanding comes over his face. “Ah.”

“Exactly. It's just not right, is all I'm saying.”

He slumps back on the bench and looks around the park, at all the humans in their infinite variety and strange little worlds. They seem to be moving on just fine from the apocalypse, which is typical. It's in their biological wiring, he knows. Once upon an age, they could've been eaten on their way home from the store by a passing saber mammoth; no sense in getting all out of sorts about a little world-not-ending.

He heaves a heavy sigh and angles a look over his sunglasses at the angel. “What about you? Notice anything else? Any lingering, you know – stains of evil?”

Aziraphale, slathered in an unreasonable amount of sunscreen and shaded by a wide brimmed hat, takes a moment to reach back and scratch between his shoulders. “Evil? Not unless you count the three new copies of _Some Mistakes of Moses_ that came into the shop.”

“Please, Ingersoll isn’t evil,” Crowley says dismissively. “Just inconvenient.”[1]

* * *

Were Aziraphale a normal angel, the sort who visited Upstairs more often, he would currently be wondering at the course his week had taken. An increased interest in composition, decreased interest in food, and a sudden onset of scaliness. 

As it was, he has spent years absorbing various vices into his character: gluttony for food and books, a friendship (perhaps more) with a demon, a strange fascination with the gavotte. This is how things are because if they were _meant_ to be another way than they would be. And that settles it. No use dwelling. Ineffability, while cruel at times, could be a mighty weapon when applied properly to the conscience.

Since he did not notice anything especially out of the ordinary, no compunction stopped him from picking up the phone and dialing Crowley.

“How do snakes have sex?”

 _Pardon_? Crowley’s voice is small, tinny, and unmistakably shocked.

“Sex, my dear boy, surely you—"

_I heard you, I’d just like to know why!_

Aziraphale stares at his copy of _Paradise Lost_ and, beside it, his own scrawl filling nearly a whole notebook now. “It’s research.”

_Aziraphale, you own a bookshop._

“I want to get it right! And there’s no beating firsthand experience!”

_What in the name of Old Scratch are you writing?_

“Well you see I was unable to sleep—incidentally, my night vision has improved _dramatically_ as of late!—and found myself wiling away the time by making some, hm, refinements to Milton.”

 _You thought you could make some improvements,_ he says slowly and there is a sound like shifting fabric before he speaks again, _On Paradise Lost?_

“Well it’s just been sitting there. The same old book!”

 _You like that same old book!_ Aziraphale opens his mouth to defend himself but Crowley cuts him off. _Listen, angel, I have to… I’m in the middle of something._ _Go check under red-bellied black snake._

“Oh, thank you, dear.”

* * *

Crowley’s been taking a bit of a vacation with no firm end-date, but demonic intervention is frequently more a creative habitual practice than a strict to-do list. A few weeks go by and one morning he unthinkingly tries to flip all the traffic signals along Oxford Street to red to save a few minutes. It goes to pieces in seconds.

Can't be much of a tempter of souls without having a little understanding of causality. He's used to feeling out the balance of power, the licks of potential evil that course through each human soul and can grow with just a bit of prodding in the wrong direction. He can take a bad decision and see how it'll turn into a series of excuses that themselves turn into a nice snowball of guilt and shame and selfishness until someday down the line, sorry laddie and Hell's punching their ticket.

If the lights all stay red, the lorry driver to his right will be late and get screamed at by his boss; later he'll snap at his kids over dinner and the little one might cry. The woman in the cab to his left will decide she doesn't have time to swing by the hospital to see her aunt after all, and the guilt will eat at her for the rest of the week. All around him people's souls cry out for a little mercy and reprieve.

“Oh _gross_ ,” says Crowley and hastily releases the traffic from his mental grip. He spends the next fifteen minutes parked in a loading zone, wondering what just happened.

He should probably talk to Aziraphale about this. Clearly it’s more serious than they’d thought. _Clearly_ they should do something about it. 

He is a snake on a mission up until the second he steps onto the sidewalk in front of the bookshop and all the love dumps on his head like a wave of puddle water from a passing vehicle. 

He blinks, dazed, and continues to the door, which he fumbles with for a few seconds before entering the shop. The feeling only intensifies once inside. 

How has he never noticed it before? He knew the angel loved his wretched little shop, but he’s never _felt_ it, never breathed it in like it was the finest hashish. Love shines out from the book bindings – some certainly more than others – and suffuses every inch of dusty shelf top. It makes Crowley feel weightless, like he’s floating over the worn wooden boards of the floor.

Aziraphale isn’t in sight; he must be in his flat upstairs. It wouldn’t be the first time he simply forgot his shop was technically open. Crowley means to go to him, but the love surrounding the books is too enticing. 

He winds his way through several stacks and ends up sitting between two of the oldest shelves in the shop, the ones holding the angel’s collection of Bibles with printing errors. 

It’s as good as a pile of stones that have spent all day warming in the sun; Crowley leans his face up against the edge of one shelf and closes his eyes for just a moment.

* * *

Aziraphale can feel the moment Crowley enters the shop (if he hadn’t, the rather alarming amount of noise coming from downstairs would have called his attention), but so absorbed is he in _the words_ that he keeps on writing. Crowley will come find him if he needs him. There’s something relaxing about tuning out the rest of the world, his focus on the page and, very occasionally, the demon stalking his bookshelves on the ground floor. 

Still, he’s a little surprised when he next looks up at the clock and sees an hour has passed. He’s disappeared in the complexity of the written word before, but he’s usually in the same room as Crowley and it’s never been his own. 

“My dear,” he calls down the narrow staircase. “Do you recall why Filippo slapped Dante so viciously when we were in Florence?”

Crowley must have fallen asleep because he sounds drowsy and startled when he calls back up. “Filippo _Argenti?_ Ah, some… family affair, if I’m not mistaken. I thought you were putting _Paradise Lost_ to rights.”

“Oh no, I finished that hours ago. This is to fix Alighieri!”

“Can’t argue with that.”

Aziraphale remembers. The man got quite a lot wrong, despite how desperately Crowley tried to argue with him on the subject.

“This one’s a caper of sorts,” he says, gathering his papers and leaving the tea where it’s gone cold (again). “A rescue from a _fiendish_ offender. You can read the other, if you’d like! It’s on my desk, under the new Ingersoll.”

* * *

“Ingersoll,” Crowley mutters mutinously as he unrolls to his feet. He has mixed feelings about him. Man blathers on about how Crowley’s actions are so _very_ heroic but then misattributes them to Satan. It was just typical – very Tesla and Edison, wherein Crowley’s the brilliant innovator and Satan’s the power-hungry twat who swoops in and takes all the credit.

He goes over to Aziraphale’s desk – which is in quite a state, even more so than usual. Before Crowley was dosed with the love kool-aid, he would’ve shook his head over it. Now he just sees how _lived-in_ it is, how much pleasure Aziraphale has experienced working at it. It’s beautiful.

He makes a rude noise at himself and ruthlessly shakes off the fugue. 

He locates the fresh sheaf of papers and props himself against the desk, settling in to read and hoping Aziraphale’s strange new hobby will be diverting enough to let Crowley ignore the soft wafts of love still drifting through the air.

His hopes are indisputably fulfilled. He reads, with mounting hysteria:

 _The snake surrounded him so that he was consumed in twists of cool scales_ . _His cloaca opened with a damp sound and his genitals emerged. It was erotic, probably._

“What,” he says. The paper offers him no answers, so Crowley repeats the question with a threatening shake. “ _What_.”

“Are you talking to me, Crowley?” says Aziraphale from the foot of the stairs.

“No, of course I’m not – ” Crowley’s voice dies as he whips around to address the angel, because it’s hard to continue talking when all the air in the room has been deposed by a grenade of reverent tenderness. “ _Hngg_.”

The angel frowns. “Are you all right?”

It makes the centuries of accumulated love for the shop look rather shabby. _It_ being the supernova of emotion Aziraphale feels as he looks at Crowley. The colors in the room soften. Sounds blur. Everything in his reality takes a dainty step to the left.

“Do you,” Crowley says, dry-mouthed and testing. “Do you feel – off at all. Right now?”

The frown deepens and turns perplexed. “I don’t allow myself to get food poisoning after that last trip to Northern Ireland, you know that.”[2]

Crowley stares hard at him, because could he not _know_ he’s spraying adoration about like a fire hydrant operated by someone hopped up on PCP? 

“You’re acting very peculiar,” adds the celestial being who’s been writing snake smut.

Crowley straightens jerkily from the desk and snipes, “Oh, leave me alone. I want to read.” He shakes the papers again, but Aziraphale only beams and says:

“I knew you’d be supportive. Do let me know what you think!” And then he turns and pops back upstairs, leaving Crowley to have his discreet crisis in peace.

One of them, he decides, is going mad. 

* * *

Angels don't dream as a rule. God will send the occasional prophetic vision. That is to say, the wiring up there is set up to receive, but no one is picking up.

Aziraphale, behind his eyelids and in his own mind, is having a very heated discussion with a few individuals of note.

Milton says, in a voice that sounds an awful lot like Crowley's, "I thought you liked my book."

"I did," Aziraphale squawks. "I _do_!"

Alighieri steps into his line of sight like a wisp of morning mist, tapping his foot loud enough to echo around the small space. "And mine?"

"I,” Aziraphale grasped valiantly for words, “ _appreciated_ the effort." He purses his lips, staring around himself. Wherever they were was somewhere he knew – a smoking den of some sort – but the memory of it was just out of his grasp. "It's just that no one told me I could change the things I didn't like!"

“You don't like the drowning of Ophelia?” Shakespeare is wearing a nightdress covered in mallards, and has an expression of childlike petulance.

“It’s terribly sad.”

“It’s _realism_ , Aziraphale,” says Bunyan. He, at least, looks slightly amused.

“I'm dreadfully sorry I wrote in your book.” He catches himself and adds, “Though let us be honest, you are the last in this circle to speak to me about realism.”

Wilde looms behind him, hazy and overbearing. “What’s next, friend? Will you then be tackling my works?”

“Oh, I wouldn't dream of it. I could never get the voice right,” Aziraphale assures him. He turns on his heel to face the lot of them. “All of you just – I love your works, truly! I don’t know why I'm doing… whatever this is. But it feels very nice.”

They all take a lofty step back, seemingly placated for the moment.

“Actually, between you and me,” Aziraphale can’t help but chuckle, feeling that giggling excitement build as he has with each new idea. “I’ve been thinking of writing something for _Frankenstein_!”

“You _what_?” a woman demands coldly from behind him.

 _Shelley!_ Aziraphale falls through the air, arms waving in a wild panic in the presence of all that pent up rage from the era of Romanticism.

Aziraphale expects to land at some point, but his legs hover slightly above his hips as he continues his descent, so different from flying. He hasn't flown in ages. He stretches out his wings to slow his fall. He turns in the air, biting back an exultant whoop, and wonders at the sight of nothingness.

There is a spot of black, like ash, nestled in the white down lining close to his face. Curious, he reaches out a hand to tug at the feather—

Aziraphale is uncomfortably warm when he wakes, glasses akimbo. 

He doesn't remember falling asleep and moves quickly to apologize down the stairs at Crowley, who he hopes is still here. He's stopped by the familiar face of a large, black serpent.

Crowley is asleep, curled around his shoulders and pooled in his lap if Aziraphale is judging the weight properly. If he ever watched him sleep in Eden, he's long since forgotten what it looked like, and so takes a moment to sit back in his chair and categorize every shiny scale.

"Such a reputation you have, old friend." Aziraphale waits for the petulant hiss, the mocking flick of Crowley's tongue. When nothing comes, and Aziraphale is sure the other is well and truly asleep, he smiles. "Oh, but look at you."  
  
Aziraphale rises gently, hands securely on his shoulder and waist, and tries not to wake Crowley as he goes over to the bed. All things told, it’s a Miracle he doesn’t. It’s a matter of moments to bundle his top sheet up into a facsimile of a pallet. Likely Crowley will just wriggle out of the circle and make himself comfortable across the whole bed, but he’ll know Aziraphale had tried to…

To what? Take care of him? Crowley always pretended to hate that. And how long had it been since he’d seen him in such a vulnerable state?

Aziraphale stares at the curled up shape of his sleeping friend and, on any other day, his mind would have stayed just there. Would certainly have cause, but not dare to wander how Crowley has _always_ been kind, and the many unfair ways that ‘kind’ did not always mean _correct_ in the eyes of his superiors.

Now, he thinks of the unfinished passage waiting on his desk. The great serpent that was once Vanni Fucci writhing against the celestial wavelength sent by Michael. It is easier to picture Crowley a snake or even a man who once stole from the church than one of the fallen angels guarding Dis. To try and imagine their pain or what they’ve been through—

Aziraphale takes a steadying breath and paces back to his desk where his story lay, incomplete.

_Vanni Fucci could not be still. It was not in his nature. But as they laid together, he allowed the Angel to draw closer while he gathered himself into lazy coils. "You have seen every side of me. Can you now truthfully call this venture worth the trouble?"_

_The Angel could not be impatient. It was not in its nature. "Look..." the Angel said, very patiently, but with the unmistakable mark of tetchiness._

The words of le Carre spill from Aziraphale's pen onto the page. He glances around furtively before putting any more of them on the lips of the Angel. Who will know, after all?[3] And he writes: 

_"We're getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems. Both of us, I am sure, have experienced ad nauseam the technical satisfactions of this wretched war. Don't you think it's time to recognise that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?"_

* * *

Demons do dream, as it happens. Or rather, one demon does.

It's not _easy_ ; not just any fallen being can crawl out of the fiery pit and start hallucinating wildly during REM sleep; it takes practice and imagination. Crowley has plenty of the latter. And as for the former, well – it's been six thousand years.

When he bothers to sleep, he almost always dreams. He likes the world he can create in his mind, one where he can do anything but no repercussions exist, no points are tallied, no souls are lost or won. No paperwork. It’s just fun, which in Crowley’s opinion is all anything should be.

On occasions where he falls asleep on accident, his sleep is always dreamless, and he awakens feeling groggy and not a little confused. But he has never unconsciously transformed into a snake before. 

That’s new.

He can transform into any shape he desires, but he has been a little leery of doing so as of late because a little niggling worry he'll forget how to change back. One doesn't spend millennia fine-tuning the settings on a machine only to overhaul them completely. His body is precisely how he likes it, plus or minus some hair here and there, and he doesn't see any point in going about risking losing a setting for temporary convenience.

There's nothing convenient about being a snake, however, so he doesn't know what this new thing is about. Can't drive a car as a snake, or put on a record, or carry a bottle of wine or a picnic basket, or—

Aziraphale. Fuck!

Crowley covertly pokes his head out of a runnel of bedsheet – when did he get on the bed? Has he started transporting himself in his sleep too? That's asking for trouble – and twists around until he spies the angel, who is once more hunched over his desk, writing furiously away.

He tries very hard not to feel stroppy about being put aside to sleep like a pet. He'd give the angel a piece of his mind, but he's not actually sure he can take being concussed with all that love again.

So he miracles himself out of the bookshop and into the Bentley, transforming back into his human appearance as he goes. The pillowy warmth of the bed and the love haze disappear, replaced with the familiar fresh, clean lines of automotive excellence.

It takes a few minutes of stretching and rolling his neck before he feels somewhat normal again. He checks a mirror, sees his hair is more rockabilly pompadour than sleek modern coif, and sighs.

* * *

Crowley is gone when Aziraphale stops writing long enough to pay attention again. It's not as much of a surprise as he'd like it to be. Crowley is many things but (disregarding the past eleven years), ever-present isn't one of them.

Aziraphale considers that he ought to leave the shop himself, if only because his innate shop owner senses – honed through years of inarguable misuse – tell him there is a customer fast approaching: the best time to turn the shop sign to Closed and take a walk. 

Aziraphale walks the length of Greek Street and picks up the first paper since he's been back in his shop. He used to have the Celestial Observer, Heaven's best – well, Heaven's _only_ – source of informative fishwrapping delivered directly to his shop. But he recently realised what is so often important Upstairs has very little impact in his dealings on Earth. 

He's not expecting a lengthy piece about what happened to Crowley and he after the failure of an Apocalypse. Maybe a small blurb letting his fellows know what not to do in the future. Perhaps under _Health and Wellbeing._

There's nothing. He even looks through the _Letters to the Editor_ (stopping to read a sternly polite address about transmutation in the breakroom). He's… angry. Crowley had gone up there and risked his life for this?

(He wouldn't have died but that's not quite the point.)

"Can you believe this?" There is a human beside him, blocking the front of the newsstand he's taken his own paper from.

Aziraphale opens his mouth to deliver the small miracle he always grants around the daily news. A simple nudge towards thoughts of a more forgiving nature, down the path of the Divine.

But with the Celestial Observer still firmly in his grip, he's not feeling particularly charitable. So what comes out instead is: "Rubbish and shite."

The man chuckles and Aziraphale feels darkness lap higher up his mortal soul. A tendril of sin creeps out and chucks Aziraphale under the chin, not dissimilar from an affectionate father telling him, _There's a good lad._

"Oh goodness," says Aziraphale and closes the paper, folding it under his arm as he walks away. "That's new."

 _Was this really all it took?_ He marvels as he turns the sign to Open on his door, having spent most of the walk not thinking at all. _Two words?_

No wonder Crowley had so often refused to call it falling. Sauntering, indeed. More like being dropped if it could happen so easily. It _had_ happened so easily.

So this was it then. This was what he was now.

"What does that make Crowley?" 

He knows Crowley is the one best suited to answer that. He directs his query to the books instead.

* * *

This might be easier, Crowley thinks, if he knew literally any other angel, if he could determine if this bleedover was coming specifically from Aziraphale’s quirks or a more general celestial grace.

His own memories are a useless resource; his time before the Fall is hazy for the most part. A lot of what he knows is based more on inference than actual recollection. Example: he fell, therefore he must’ve been on Lucifer’s side, _therefore_ he must’ve been bored to the very tips of his wings because, honestly: _Lucifer_? Not exactly a box of delights even when he was still an angel. That, Crowley remembers pretty clearly.

Crowley is sitting on a bench, watching a playground get overrun by very enthusiastic children.[4]

He fell before humans existed, so he doesn’t have much to go on here, but he doesn’t think this love business existed back then. No way would he have fallen in with those dripping bores if he’d had _love_ to play with. 

Over by the swing set, a small girl is wriggling on her perch, begging her father to push her. The man, eyes on his phone, nudges her forward every few seconds with an absent palm. He is oblivious to her mounting frustration. 

Crowley tilts his head and urges the swing to go a little faster, a little higher. The girl screams her delight to the sky, and he grins toothily to himself for a moment before the gloominess returns.

If he’s got this, who knows what poor Aziraphale’s dealing with; they haven’t talked much since Crowley woke up as a snake and fled the bookshop like old St. Pat himself was on his heels. But the angel’s hopeless. He’s probably struggling with all sorts of guilt and torment right about now.

Normally this would be cause enough for Crowley to pull a face (and then a drastic U-turn on a busy street) and run to fix whatever was causing the angel grief. But he’s hesitating now, because this time fixing it means fixing Crowley. Means going back to normal. 

(Over by the swingset, the father’s phone leaps out of his hand and lands in the puddle beneath his daughter’s swing.) 

Crowley doesn’t want to go back to normal. And that’s perhaps the most terrifying thing of all.

* * *

_This is Anthony Crowley._ _You know what to do, do it with style._

Aziraphale sets the phone back in its cradle, worrying his lip. He hasn't seen Crowley, serpent or otherwise, in a week; the feeling he refuses to acknowledge as _worry_ is if this has something to do with the newly finished story on his desk. 

Aziraphale had been absorbed in the process of writing for some time, the espionage retelling of _Dante’s Inferno_ having taken a decidedly more sober bent than he had originally intended. There was no avoiding it, he supposes, Angel saving the Serpent from an unjust sentence in the Eighth Circle of Hell… he may have gotten in his own head a bit. 

Looking back, most of the heroic leads he conjured up had a decidedly Crowley-like countenance. 

From Aziraphale’s perspective, this isn’t anything of note; he had a great affection for the demon, which mortifies and mollifies Crowley in equal measure. This affection had for so long been their steadfast companion, an unspeaking guest at their dinners. To press at it so openly, even when they were no longer adversaries, perhaps he had been too brazen?

Or maybe it's nothing so dramatic as that. Likely he's having as much, if not more, trouble adjusting to whatever feelings and sensations have been dumped upon him as Aziraphale. 

In retrospect, the snake regression should have been a tip off.

Aziraphale touches the phone again. Perhaps if he leaves a voicemail this time….

 _You know where he lives_ , a sugary, suggestive voice says.

“It would be rude,” Aziraphale mutters to his fingers, tapping an erratic pattern on the phone.

 _But effective!_ The voice that sounds only a touch lighter than his own argues.

“Honestly, showing up unannounced, when anyone _civilized_ knows to phone ahead. Maybe ask if he needs something from the shop?”

_Are you? Civilized?_

“ _Yes_ , of course!”

_Don’t yell at me, I’m only being a conscience!_

It isn’t wrong.

“All right,” he concedes, pushing away from his desk. “But I _am_ bringing biscuits.”

* * *

Aziraphale uses the excuse of being so near Crowley’s flat to check in on Grosvenor Chapel. His shop is only a twelve minute walk, but he’s always gone out of his way to visit St Bart’s instead, perform a few minor miracles while he’s there. Besides, he’d never had the desire after 1894 when the last vestiges of Keith’s Chapel disappeared.[5]

He feels uncomfortable the moment he enters. Not in any large amount of pain, just… vaguely unwelcome. Aziraphale levels a flat stare at his itching feet as if to say, ‘How _dare_ you’. To the closest beam of wood he whispers, “Don’t you give me any cheek, Jacobite. Your creator and I had an understanding.”

The chapel must feel somewhat abashed, for the feeling in his chest lightens almost immediately. But a dull tingle remains in his feet. He flexes his toes; yet another action item to report when he speaks to Crowley. 

He stays a handful of minutes longer, staring at the holy water by the door on his way out, feeling for the first time, a trifle wary.

It's a short trek from the church to Crowley's flat, and he has to juggle the box of mixed sweets from Aubaine Patisserie to his other arm in order to knock on the door loud enough for Crowley to hear. 

"Crowley?" he calls out, tone contrite as he can manage. "I'd like to see you please!"

The door, tall and imposing, opens a crack. Beyond it are shadows and two very yellow and very wary eyes.

"Hello, dear." Aziraphale smiles, and for a moment Crowley looks as though he might slam the door shut again. "Grosvenor just tried to toss me out. I was wondering if you could give me some advice."

Predictably, Crowley goes soft around the corners of his eyes, his mouth ticking up into something like a smile before he catches himself. "You'll be wanting to come in then?"

Aziraphale tilts the box of sweets at the door. "I brought your favorites! Well, my favorites. But they're made with the Divine Manna of Heaven so presumably you enjoy them slightly more than you used to."

"Was that the excuse you sent to home office all these years?" Crowley opens the door, turning immediately back towards the main hall. "Ah, Pardon the mess. Messes."

Indeed Crowley's flat is in a state. Bags packed and unpacked. Azirapahle sets his box on the nearly empty kitchen counter, tries to keep his voice level when he asks, "Going somewhere?"

"Was...am. Doesn't matter." Crowley leans against the couch, arms folded. "Cuba maybe. Have you been to Cuba?"

"We were there in 1878. Ten Years War, remember?"

Crowley shudders, limbs flicking out like a rag doll. "Try to forget. Not Cuba then."

When Crowley offers no further destination, Aziraphale holds up a finger. “Back in a tick.” 

He’s been in Crowley’s flat a scant few times, but he can feel the expanded space of the wine cellar beneath his feet; a wrinkle in the molecules of the building shifted to create a flex space that no human architect could have conceived. He doesn’t want to leave his friend alone for very long. The luggage has him concerned. He has no doubt that Crowley has spent all week dramatically packing, but now that he's actually seen Aziraphale he's liable to spook and miracle himself away to Berwickshire. Then he'll get embarrassed and moody about having gone to Berwickshire and refuse to come back for four months. 

No, he best hurry.

Aziraphale miracles the cellar locks away and opens the door, greeted with a face full of circulated air. He knows exactly what he’s looking for as he descends the steps. As celestial beings go, Aziraphale would not say that they have refined palettes, so much as stubborn; one of the Barone Ricasoli reds appears in his hand with a thought. He turns back, wine in hand, to see Crowley at the top of the steps, propped on the doorframe and glasses shielding his eyes once more.

“Angel,” he says, slowly. “How did you get that?”

Aziraphale shoos him back to the kitchen. It isn’t difficult considering Crowley is practically stumbling away from him, so it becomes more a matter of wrangling than anything else. 

“I may have cheated a little,” he admits, setting the bottle on the counter next to the sweets, pulling down a plate and two glasses from the cabinet above his head.

“Cheated?” Crowley draws in a sharp breath behind him. “You can’t cheat my cellar locks, Aziraphale! They’re demonically coded. Specifically against _you_ , after that stunt you pulled in ‘94![6] You would have to be…” Aziraphale finishes stacking their snacks onto the plate and turns to see Crowley floundering. “You’d have to be an entirely different person!” 

Aziraphale would be offended that Crowley has specific locks made for him, if he didn’t have a vault of his own with the same countermeasures against Crowley--one takes precautions when dealing with a wily, thirsty adversary who tends to come and go as they please. “You must not have locked it.”

“So it wasn’t locked then?”

“ _It wasn’t locked then_ ,” Aziraphale mimics, flustered now. “Of course it was locked. But I still like my theory better than yours!” 

“You just _mocked_ me,” Crowley says, a flicker of pride behind his offended expression.

“I know,” says Aziraphale, instantly contrite. “I’m sorry.”

He waves an impatient hand. “Don’t worry about it. Clearly this is more serious than we thought. Has anything else unusual been going on?” 

Aziraphale considers it. He’s mentioned the problem at the church, and Crowley already knows about his frankly _bizarre_ approach towards the written word, of late. He supposes he needn’t detail what amounts to his bad attitude, Crowley having experienced it first hand.

“Oh!” he claps, startling the demon. “I've got a bit of patchy skin between my shoulders.” Crowley doesn’t blink. “Except I think they might be scales.”

“ _Scales_?”

“At first I thought it was a rash—”

“That you couldn’t miracle away?”

Aziraphale feels his lips tug down into a frown. This is enough to silence Crowley, which is for the best, because he doesn’t want to admit he hadn’t actually tried to miracle it away. It had just seemed like so much bother and, besides that, what if he _couldn’t_?

He continues, “Then I thought perhaps this is just what happens when one falls. We’re told,” he points up, a little primly. “Up there, that you become the avatar of what you are when you’re first cast out.”

“And you thought: snake,” says Crowley, now unreadable.

“I’d always hoped bumblebee, honestly.”

Crowley circles him. “You’d get the freedom of flight that way, at least.” 

_Flight_. Aziraphale nods slowly. 

“The good news is this isn’t falling as I’ve ever seen it,” Crowley reaches out and tugs his collar down to examine the scales in question, humming lowly. Aziraphale startles but something in his mind has elbowed him hard, is dragging his attention back to the word _flight, flight, flight…_. “Bad news, I have no idea what—”

“Flight!”

“What?” Crowley leaps back when Aziraphale whirls around. “ _What_?”

“Crowley I need to see your wings.”

* * *

“Now look who’s going too fast,” Crowley says, glib covering for consternation. Not just any day your companion drops all pretense of shyness and asks you to whip it out, after all.

Aziraphale only looks exasperated. “Come now, I’ve seen them before.”

Crowley doesn't know if he's referring to that day in Tadfield or Eden or that time they went drinking with Rabelais, but the answer doesn't really matter because none of them count. On those other occasions, he'd spent as much time appreciating Crowley's wings as he had his latest hairstyle; which is to say not much.

Aziraphale takes a step forward, hands raised like he might be able to encourage the wings out like a shy woodland animal, and Crowley takes a smart step back.

Aziraphale frowns. Crowley takes another step and pretends not to notice.

“What are you looking for?” Crowley doesn’t mean to snap, but Aziraphale is staring at him, that glaringly loud amount of love that had been reduced to a simmer for the past several minutes suddenly brought to a boil.

“I’m not sure yet. But I might know a way to fix what’s happening to us if you can trust me for a moment.”

“I trust you,” Crowley says, but he doesn’t budge an inch.

“Do you,” begins Aziraphale, brow crinkled and voice going peculiar. “Do you – not want to fix it?”

“Don't be daft.”

He knows he can't leave the angel with any demonic imprint. For one, he'd ruin the group's reputation. And for two, Aziraphale might go and actually fall, and Crowley doesn't fancy a great big bumblebee sitting beside him in the Bentley for the rest of eternity, or however long they've got before Heaven and Hell rally and come for humanity.

Aziraphale's still watching him, and Crowley snaps, “Oh, alright, _fine_ – ” and his best shirt tears along its seams as the iridescent black wings emerge.

All the plants in the flat are doused in a wave of fear and know not why. Shadows in the corners pulse and seem to grow as the wings stretch out and fill the room, the long feathers drawing in light like a collapsed star. A new darkness has emerged on the physical plane, something ancient and fallen. It knows how to crawl but hungers to fly; it belongs above, to spread wide its shadow upon fleeing creatures and swoop down with a terrible cry –

“Good Heavens,” says Aziraphale. "Do the drapes match your wings?"

He peers between them in astonishment; the feathers are a very particular shade of black, the full spectrum of light having made a journey from the sun to the deepest ravenous dimensions of Hell. Perhaps the drapes came from Harrods.

“Yes.” Crowley's eyes dart behind the sunglasses, checking. “You like?”

“Oh _very_ fetching,” assures the angel. He circles him attentively, and Crowley folds his arms and tolerates the perusal, but only because all that concern and love is perhaps having a somewhat narcotizing effect.

Somewhere behind him, Aziraphale makes an interested noise, the same one he makes when he's come across a rare book in a charity shop for two quid. Crowley cranes his neck, trying fruitlessly to look at his own back (this, it must be said, is the one downside to not being a snake).

“What?” he asks, “What is it?”

Aziraphale's only response is to reach out and bury his hand in among the plumage of Crowley’s wings, making Crowley's spine go long and rigid, his toes curl, and just possibly produce a sound not unlike the squeak of a cork.

“What?” he gasps again.

“Yes, I see the issue here,” Aziraphale circles around to face him again, sounding a little flustered. “You, well. Seem to have come over a bit angelic?”

Crowley’s wings lift in obvious impatience.

“A feather, dear. Here, check me, see what I mean.” Aziraphale shakes out his wings, and it's only that the walls of the flat know better than to bump up against them that the two sets of wings fit in the room at all. Next to Crowley's, Aziraphale's wings are a glossy white, almost painfully bright to look at. Much like the angel himself, at the moment; it doesn’t mean Crowley won’t try.

Aziraphale glances over his shoulder at him and rustles his wings pointedly. “Well? See anything of yours?”

Crowley redirects his gaze and spots the misfit immediately: one slender, razorsharp black feather looking all-too-cozy and smug nestled in among the pearly white.

“Huh,” is what he says. “So we didn't switch back all the way. That's all this is?”

It'll be easy to fix. Too damned easy.

“I'm afraid so.” Aziraphale turns, looking as hesitant as Crowley feels. His fingers curling and uncurling in front of his chest. “I suppose we should… take them back then.”

This is good, Crowley assures himself, as Aziraphale finds the white spot on his wing once more. He shudders, so buried in the mental force of Aziraphale’s fondness, his body can hardly process the physical sensations, particularly since this part of his body has had little experience in the world of late. 

By the time his muscles uncoil, and he manages to get a better look at what’s happening, Aziraphale has plucked the feather out, pulling away like _he’s_ the one who’s been burned. In the wake of it, Crowley feels like he’s been dragged out of the ocean and left on the shore like a beached jellyfish.

Aziraphale has the good grace to look contrite, at least, staring between his closed fist and Crowley. But Crowley is too focused on the feelings around Aziraphale to notice. Namely that they seem to be slipping away, slowly ebbing into nothing, an ocean draining from the sand at low tide. After a few hard blinks, he can look at Aziraphale again, straight in the eye, and not feel like he’s staring into the sun. 

He is bereft.

“Let’s see it then.” Crowley makes a circular motion with his finger.

He doesn’t like how out of breath he sounds. Aziraphale spreads his palm, presenting the feather in his hand like a treasure. Crowley looks at it, the single white piece of down that had been hidden in his gleaming black wings and thinks: _It is that_.

Crowley reaches out to touch it. As soon as his fingers clasp around the white down he regrets the decision, overwhelmed with sunspots of concern and compassion, a cacophony of emotion.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale is over him, hands hovering, unsure where to land. “Drop the feather.”

Crowley obeys, feels the emotion retreat to something manageable and far away. He cracks open one eye. “Your turn, angel.”

Aziraphale lifts his arm, fingers stopping just short of his own wing to brush some invisible speck of dust from his shoulder. “Right, of course.”

Crowley flicks his eyes to Aziraphale for the angel’s quick assent before reaching out. Aziraphale takes a breath and nods.

“ _Wait,_ ” he catches Crowley’s wrist as his fingertips touch the place where white meets black. “I feel like I finally understand a little bit. What it is that you’ve tried to tell me all these years. What if I lose that?”

“I didn’t want to lose what I had either,” snaps Crowley. He lets his wrist hang loose in Aziraphale’s grasp, unable to look at the angel for an entirely different reason now. “Love. I could feel it.”

Aziraphale is quiet for such a long time, the silence occasionally broken by their wings, two contrasting coats of feathers fanned out and shifting to avoid one another. Crowley looks up only to see the same familiar smile he’s always greeted with after one of Aziraphale’s contemplative pauses. After six thousand years, Crowley’s not sure how he keeps falling for it.

“You haven't lost that, Crowley, I promise.” Crowley seems unsure how to respond, lips parted slightly to reveal very clenched teeth. Aziraphale clears his throat, a red hue to his cheeks. “I suppose it’ll be nice not to be so distracted.”

“And I can go back to cheating on my commute without feeling a niggle of guilt.”

“Crowley—” Aziraphale starts, sounding predictably disapproving. Crowley thinks his feather must not be doing him too many favors if it can’t even save him from the horrors of _mild reproach_. Crowley pulls the spot of black from Aziraphale’s wing (maybe harder than he needs to) before he can say more.

"Now then, I believe you brought sweets?"

* * *

“But did you misplace more?” Crowley stares at two feathers laying innocently next to one another on his coffee table between a plate of crumbs and a mostly empty bottle of wine. “Surely there isn't just one white feather back there, everything I been through the past couple weeks.”

“I didn't lose any,” Aziraphale says, edging towards indignant. Does Crowley really think him so careless? “It was a one-for-one mistake.”

Crowley scoffs, incredulous. “I don't think you understand – people have been _smiling_ at me.”

“I smile at you all the time, it proves nothing.”

“Yeah, but you're – you.” Crowley says. Before Aziraphale can even think of preening to that statement, he adds, “Recent events have proven _your_ head's gone round the bend. Probably happened ages ago and I just didn't notice.”

Aziraphale is unimpressed with Crowley’s logic. “Are you saying we should check for more?”

“Ngk." Crowley sounds panicked, elbows resituating themselves at jaunty angles on the back of the couch. Aziraphale understands the reaction all too well. The suggestion is prideful in a way even a demon would find reason to question. God crafted their wings perfectly, after all.

They haven’t put them away, from before. It’s been nice to give them an airing out, and Aziraphale’s done a good job pretending the fascinating sheen of Crowley’s aren’t there in the interim. This will prove impossible when he must touch them. 

And, if he _must…_.

“Entirely up to you,” he says, aiming for something light and inviting.

"Yeah, course.” Crowley practically bends in half to set his glass on the table, wings shifting restlessly above his head. “If only to avoid this sort of thing in the future.”

Aziraphale stretches out a tentative arm, ignoring the way the muscles in Crowley’s neck constrict, bright fingernails scraping against row after row of perfectly smooth vane. Aziraphale was born alongside the first birds and long before man had ever thought to name them. Sifting fingers through what they called primaries and secondaries he thinks _flight, power, control._

“Well? Anything?” Crowley is staring straight ahead, jaw taut. Aziraphale suddenly worries he’s causing him some pain. It hadn’t hurt when Crowley had touched _his_ wings earlier. In fact, it had felt….

Aziraphale presses his fingertips up under the base of the closest feathers ( _lift,_ he thinks) and Crowley takes a quick breath, falling forward an inch. Aziraphale uses the movement to take Crowley’s hand, where it rests loose on his knee, and guides it to his own wing, chasing the favorable sensation from before and disappointed when Crowley seems stuck, hand motionless next to the highest joint. 

Aziraphale tastes sulfur on the air, cinches a third eye open[7]to make sure there isn’t a gas leak. Fine particles of Hell shake themselves from Crowley’s wings with every small movement of Aziraphale’s hand, and land on the couch like small pieces of cinder. There must be some on his as well, Aziraphale reasons, as well as the cloyingly synthetic scent of Heaven he’s always eager to cover up with fine cologne.

He thinks he smells it, just there underneath the brimstone, but upon focusing he realises the scent is something far more intriguing.

“Apple blossom?”

Crowley raises his head, sniffing the air almost experimentally. Aziraphale wants to say he has no idea what Crowley is thinking when their eyes meet, but what a lie what would be; for all the pitfalls his life on Earth had laid out, its singular advantage was that he _knows_ Crowley. And now, thank God, or Adam, or Crowley’s blasted feather—he understands him.

There is longing there, and the whisper of nostalgia. For the garden or something else, that Aziraphale doesn’t know, but some of it at least, he can feel mirrored in his countenance.

“You were right to do what you did, in the garden,” Aziraphale says. Crowley opens his mouth, eyebrows drawn together, hand still frustratingly held aloft while Aziraphale’s rests on the muscles of his right wing. “No, no. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.” He considers the stacks of manuscripts lining his desk at home. “An _awful_ lot. And you deserve to hear it. I promise that’s all I’ll say about it, I shan’t embarrass you anymore.”

But for once, Crowley doesn’t look even a little embarrassed by the praise. He’s smiling at him, fond like he gets whenever -- well. Like he gets. “I was just going to say thank you, angel.”

“Good then.” Aziraphale begins to pull away albeit jerkily, as wrapped as he is in the sudden sensory bath of a garden long since browned and dead. “Well, as I said, I don’t see anything—”

Crowley darts forward, evading Aziraphale’s clumsy half-hearted resistance. Aziraphale swallows hard and goes still, his grip on Crowley’s wrist softening. Crowley presses up close to hiss in his ear, “Ssstop lying.” 

* * *

Crowley looks at the angel’s downcast eyes, the flush on his cheeks and thinks _not again_ , _not again_ never mind they’ve never actually gotten this close before. But Aziraphale’s hesitation is a million moments scattered across the years compressed into a giant diamond of rejection, a diamond currently walloping him across the head. 

“You see everything, you just don’t want to admit it.” Crowley brings his hand up, fingers bypassing feather to dig into the muscle underneath.

It must be the restored numbness that’s making him act this way, finally snap. Maybe he can no longer feel Aziraphale’s love, but he knows it’s there, has to believe it’s still there. That it will be there tonight, and tomorrow, and a year from now. It’s the only faith he’s ever known, the faith in the two of them, together. 

“I think,” Aziraphale says, voice creeping higher the further his fingers travel, “we’re perhaps talking about two different things.”

“ _I_ think you’re the biggest damn tease ever to walk the earth.”

He tips his chin up. “I am as She made me.”

Crowley’s fingers stumble in their journey as they hit a patch of scales, not yet faded from the angel’s back. He starts to grin. “You know, I don’t think that’s true, not anymore. You, me — I think we’re as we’ve made ourselves.”

Aziraphale’s eyes dart to his and away again. Crowley wonders how much darkness he can still feel, if he is drawn at all to the bold blasphemy of the words. 

He transforms then, his wings falling and disappearing into his back as he melds forward. He stretches across his chest, nudging under the fabric of the angel’s shirt. Scales appear a second before they hit the bare skin of Aziraphale’s collarbone. He feels him shiver and it’s pleasing.

“Ssso you liked it, did you,” he asks, winding around Aziraphale's shoulders to investigate the patch of scales: black and white with a small line of red spanning from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, which seemingly criss cross under the tone of Aziraphale's skin. _Even his scales are bloody tartan_ , Crowley thinks. "Using your own imagination for once instead of borrowing from the humans."

"Ah but was it really _my_ imagination? I was, after all, borrowing from you. Therefore--Crowley what in Heavens are you doing?"

“Admit it," Crowley dips his head down and nuzzles the scales, sending a sliver of gentle skepticism and thrilling at the answering pulse he receives in return. "You liked getting to ask all the questions for once. Be a little angry _out loud_.”

“I wasn’t exactly driven to a indiscriminate spree of murder and mayhem,” says Aziraphale, managing tart despite his lack of breath. He runs a hand down his gleaming length. “Really, Crowley. If anything, this comedy of errors has proven, once and for all that you _are_ nice. Perhaps _the_ nicest — oh.” He breaks off with a small surprised sound.

Crowley wraps around him another round and buries his face in the lush folds of his wing, so he doesn’t have to look at him. 

It’s hard to hide things as a snake. 

“You like it when I call you that,” Aziraphale says, marveling.

Crowley slides down Aziraphale's back in an attempt to distract the angel and to remain further unseen, but physical touch against their mortal vessels has never done much for either of them as far as he can remember and he's already been found out anyway. He can feel Aziraphale's chuckle, a small tremor traveling up his body despite the way he tries to hide it.

"Sorry, dear, I did say I wouldn't embarrass you anymore."

Crowley thinks the line between embarrassment and pleasure is a funny thing. _Does_ he like it, he asks himself. Yes. Does it also fill his every molecule with appalling distress, making him want to throw Aziraphale across the room in a fit of childish pique? _Also yes_ , his mind answers, equally loud and emphatic. 

What can he say, six thousand years is a long time to form habits. 

Aziraphale seems to come to a decision of sorts — Crowley can tell by the way he straightens his back. And when he peeks up at his face, it has fallen into the clean, righteous lines of one determined to do good. Crowley braces himself.

“You began to sense love, you said,” Aziraphale says. “My dear, do you know what I sense when I look at you?”

Crowley supposes the answer is not _a cunning foe, worthy match of wits and wiles_ , and so he remains silent.

“I feel your devotion, Crowley. I’ve long felt it.” 

* * *

Aziraphale's wings nudge at Crowley, forcing the demon to hold his gaze. He does and blinks and in an instant is his true form once more, sat snugly between Aziraphale’s thighs, dark wings held tense and protective above the two of them, as if they could shield the conversation from God herself. He takes his sunglasses off and meets Aziraphale's eyes, searching. 

“Why didn’t you say anything? Isn’t devotion something your lot approve of?”

“When it’s to God, of course -- but you,” Aziraphale cannot manage to finish the sentence. A habit spanning the millennia, he thinks, cannot be broken in a day. For one, there is the audacity of speaking such a capital sin aloud. The idea of this kind of idolatry--

“It’s not God I’m devoted to,” Crowley agrees darkly. “No.”

And two is this. Aziraphale takes a steadying breath, the overwhelming, undeniable, selfish, spoiled, _prideful_ thought repeating like a mantra: _me. Always, it has been me._

"I know."

By all rights, Heaven and Hell should have gotten rid of them ages ago. 

He can see the place his feather had previously been, lit up like the warm glow of a dying candle, and sends a few of his molecules sparking into its place, beneath feather and form to what lay beneath.

Crowley’s breath hitches. "What are you doing?"

"What does it feel like?"

"Honestly?" he laughs, high pitched and giddy. "Solar photosphere. Warm, little ticklish."

"Fascinating." Aziraphale sends out more of himself, fingers tapping along warm, familiar pinions. He realises some of his shape will be lost in the process temporarily, small pieces of his neck and shoulder flickering and disappearing entirely as he finds himself unable to concentrate on holding what passes for a human shape on the plane they occupy.

Crowley is staring at him, bemused, but otherwise content.

"Hey angel?"

"Hm?"

"Ever felt a supernova?"

"Pardon?"

Crowley buries both hands in Aziraphale's wings and every color passes across his sight in sequence until they are all reflected at once in a blinding explosion of white. He tastes the subtle flavor of raspberry that his mind connects at once with the center of the Milky Way. What little still appears human dissolves around them, jettisoned away with the rest of Crowley's apartment; reduced to intent and sense and wings. 

Aziraphale had sat on the edge of the first supernova. He doesn't remember it, or any star feeling like this, he wants to tell Crowley, but he thinks the demon might already know. May have known years ago when he asked the right questions, the hard questions, before any of them had. 

Like why did something so beautiful feel so cold and distant? Beyond reach and understanding.

"It's a metaphor," Crowley laughs at him. "I let you become an artist for a week and look what happens."

Aziraphale tastes apples. Tarts, crisp, caramel apple… he shouldn't be so hungry here. "A metaphor for what?"

He feels sincere grief flow from Crowley. "How I wanted a supernova to feel. Back when it was all architectural design and unquestionable structure."

Aziraphale understands him and hopes he finds it comforting. "Even before the humans, you were asking questions."

"You could say I'm famous for it." 

They're both quiet but Aziraphale is content to float along in what Crowley's idea of a supernova is. Warm currents roll over him as he scoops his wings in slow, even movements. Pops of sensation electrify him to his wingtips, leaving little puffs of down floating in his wake. After a time Crowley's wings touch his own, an odd jilting feeling that settles into something unmistakably familiar.

"I can feel it but it's not so bad here." Crowley tells him, wing lazily sliding against his. Aziraphale must emit something like confusion because he eventually clarifies, "The love."

"I did promise." Aziraphale says, pleased. "Yours isn't so bad either. We could stay here, if you'd like," he says and knows Crowley is considering the offer, turning it over in his mind.

"We'll always be here," Crowley responds, and Aziraphale can sense a strong _if I have anything to say on the matter_ , behind the words. "But Earth won't. No matter what we do, one way or another it's going to be gone someday. And what would have been the point of everything we did if we didn’t enjoy it while we have it?"

"Back home then? No Alpha Centauri?"

"Think I've got the bug out of my system for a bit, yeah."

Aziraphale doesn't know how long it takes for him to slip back to the place he had been in the middle of Crowley's living room, but it takes longer to put the pieces of himself back together. Not discorporeated just… displaced. He imagines it's a bit like having to pick your underthings off the top of a bedroom lamp.

When he finishes recreating his eyes (the human set), Crowley is looking back at him, smiling and slightly embarrassed. His hair is a half an inch longer, and he hasn’t yet summoned sunglasses in place.

"You look lovely, dear," Aziraphale assures him, twisting the end of a few strands of hair between his fingers. 

With a snap from Crowley, the hair braids itself beneath Aziraphale's fingertips. Aziraphale lets out a delighted _'Oo'_ and Crowley's smile, if anything, grows. 

Being in a good mood always puts him in mind for a certain something. "I'm starving, shall we try the new Mediterranean place on Davies?"

"Angel, we just ate!"

"Oh, that was before we… well, I'm feeling famished now."

Crowley groans but Aziraphale knows when he leaves the apartment, Crowley will follow. They bicker all the way to the Bentley and over the music and right up to their table where Crowley rests a hand over Aziraphale's neck like it's entirely natural. 

And Aziraphale feels a pop of electricity; floating in warmth, like a supernova _should_ feel.

* * *

[1]Ingersoll had been right when he had said, "All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable, grew blossomed, and bore fruit in this one word – Hell." That human vice was just that --Human. But _they_ weren't supposed to know that.[return to text]

[2]The 1972 trip was no less memorable for Claire Lane, purveyor of Ballinamallard's most popular fish & chip, who had never served so much as a limp chip to her patrons, much less raw fish. But on the day the lovely middle-aged professor type stopped in, she was so torn between not wanting to appear prejudiced against the customer's exceeding Englishness and also wanting to hasten his departure before her Republican son returned from making the rounds, she neglected to fully cook the filet of cod. She did not notice the mistake because the gentleman smiled ever so kindly after the first lukewarm bite.[return to text]

[3]Plagiarism was not technically a Sin and had, in fact, been looked upon quite favorably in the eyes of Heaven...but it wasn't very nice.[return to text]

[4]An occasional pastime of Crowley's, not wholly dissimilar to attending the symphony. The souls of children are always in a state of frenetic change, dark and light playing over the surface like a strobe light. Kids have potential; kids are fun.[return to text]

[5]It is often said that the most peculiar thing about Elizabeth Gunning's clandestine wedding to the 6th Duke of Hamilton is that they were married with a ring from a bed curtain. This is false. The most peculiar thing about the Gunning-Hamilton wedding is that an angel was in attendance. It's only he was in the area for a late dinner and was delighted to be included in the whole affair.[return to text]

[6]The 1994 break-in was actually perpetrated by Alex Douglas, the twenty-four-year-old trust fund kid from the warehouse-turned-super-luxury-flat next to Crowley's, who'd always suspected the strange dark man was hiding something wizard in his flat. He wandered the shelves of the wine cellar for two weeks before finding a way out, and has never been the same since. To this day neither he nor Crowley know how the sophisticated security system was disabled. That is a dark secret the cellar is keeping to itself.[return to text]

[7]Angels are not occult, they are ethereal. However, in this regard, there is little difference, as Angels have an unlimited number of eyes, limbs, and wings, and can use as many as they wish if they don’t mind the headache that comes with seeing on several planes of existence at once.[return to text]


	2. coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An Undetermined Amount of Time Later...

In a small cottage in South Downs, a demon is planting and an angel is panicking.

"Crowley? Have you seen my manuscript?"

Crowley stares fixedly at the Weeping Fig, daring it to move. "Which one?"

"The one with..." There isn't much to the house, and Crowley can hear Aziraphale getting closer, room by room. "Oh you know, the one with the time travel."

" _Hamlet_?"

"No." Aziraphale appears in the door of Crowley's conservatory, looking furtive. "The one of which we do not speak for she is surely listening.”

"Ah, Shelley's, is it?" Crowley slaps a browning leaf from the underbelly of the fig. Behind him, Aziraphale is making absurd shushing noises as though an unseen spectre is among them. "It's between _Moby Dick_ and that comic Adam left his last trip down. You abandoned it there when you went on your _Godspell_ kick two months ago."

"That's right," says Aziraphale with a delighted clap. "Thank you, dear."

"You're welcome. Now please leave before you ruin all the hard work I've put into the hydrangeas."

He huffs. "I don't share your methods but honestly, Crowley—"

"I don't care if you're nice to them, angel, it's the watering them three times a day that leaves me frustrated."

"Oh, my." Aziraphale moves to stand behind him, voice quieter now. "Is this one still cross with me? Do tell her I apologize."

"She won't be able to hear you on the brink of death," he turns back to the fig. "You hear that? Wake up, you good for nothing ficus! There we go. That oughta shake her out of the funk a bit."

"You're horrible."

"I’m a horticulturalist."

"All right, you win. I'll leave you to your dark work." Aziraphale's mouth ticks up briefly and Crowley leans forward to place a small kiss on the corner. It isn't something they do often but they've seen the ritual repeated enough, they know its significance; significance breeds familiarity breeds habit, and they’re trying to establish some new ones. Aziraphale smiles a little wider before he leaves.

Crowley is just settling in with the azaleas when he hears a frustrated noise from the next room.

"Well now, where's that feather got to?"

Crowley lets out a low growl of his own and stands, wiping the dirt from his hands onto his trousers. He marches into the next room, past Aziraphale without stopping to look at him. He examines the spines of the haphazard pile of books on the table next to Aziraphale's chair until he finds—

"It's in the Ingersoll." Crowley turns with the book, thrusting it in Aziraphale's direction. "Where you always leave it."

"Of course it is," Aziraphale opens the book, pulling out a shiny black feather from within its pages. "Lose my head if it wasn't attached."

"Stop leaving it there, I'm begging you," Crowley throws over his shoulder as he heads back to his plants. "My feather deserves a better book."

"I shall do no such thing. I find it poetic."

"You're ridiculous."

Aziraphale hums agreeably. "Says the demon who keeps my feather in a locked safe."

"For protection."

"It's _sentimental_."

"It's security!"

Aziraphale's smile is too knowing. But then, with Crowley's feather in the palm of his hand, why wouldn't it be? "I'll let you know when I'm done with the manuscript, Crowley, so you can put it with the others in that secure, protective safe, shall I?"

Crowley considers storming off, but he's trying to be (a little) more honest these days. There’s no way around it. Crowley hisses out low between his clenched teeth, like he is bracing for the hot iron press of a crucifix. Best be out with it sharpish, he thinks, and says loudly:

"Yes, please."


End file.
